Despite the protests of environmentalists, Romania and the European Union, Ukraine is pushing ahead with plans to launch a new river transportation canal connecting the Black Sea with the Danube River.
Weeks ago Kyiv launched test trials along the canal ahead of an official opening scheduled for this month.
The so-called Bystre Canal, a shipping detour Ukraine opened that bypasses Romanian territory, offers Kyiv the opportunity to squeeze tens of millions of dollars annually in transit fees out of Romania’s hands. Transit routes controlled by the Romanian side are located just kilometers south across the national border.
Eager to keep hold of their economic edge in the shipping transit business, the Romanians have the EU and environmentalists on their side. The trio has been carrying on years of protest, arguing that use of Ukraine’s reopened canal as a shipping route endangers unique wildlife in the region.
For Ukraine, the re-launch of the canal, which was closed in 1993, is key to breaking Romania’s monopoly on shipping transit fees in the region. The canal had been used for military purposes in Soviet times. Its reopening required heavy dredging to deepen the riverbed to allow for the transit of larger ships.
The ambitious project was challenged by Romania, whose gripes have been joined by the United Nation’s Economic Commission and World Wildlife Fund. They argue that the project threatens unique fish and birds that inhabit what they describe as a distinct region, which is protected by UNESCO.
The Danube Delta is Europe’s largestwetlands, known for the richness and variety of its wildlife. It is home to more than 300 species of birds, 160 kinds of fish, including caviar-bearing sturgeon, and 800 types of plants, many of which are found nowhere else on the European continent. The idea of building a Danube-Black Sea canal on Ukrainian territory goes back to 2001, when the government decided to renew shipping via the natural Bystre Canal, which is located on the Ukrainian side of the picturesque Danube Delta.
The government’s plans were immediately challenged by environmentalists, who argued that the region was protected as a preserve – the so-called Danube Biosphere Reserve created by former president Leonid Kuchma in 1998.
Convinced of the economic benefits the canal could provide for the country, Kuchma held firm, supporting plans to reopen the canal. In 2003 he reissued his presidential decree, removing the canal region from the reserve.
Construction work on the canal started in 2004, with $100 million being spent to deepen the canal – about $30 million more than originally planned. The project was implemented by state-owned Delta-Lotsman, a shipping channel construction and operating company, but most of the work was subcontracted to Germany’s Mobius Bau AG.
In the first stage of the project, the riverbed was deepened to five meters. The second stage of the project envisioned the riverbed being deepened to seven meters at the point where the Danube flows into the Black Sea. The canal itself is 20 meters deep and needs no additional deepening.
Geopolitical levers
The press office of Delta-Lotsman defended the controversial canal project, saying it was a necessary step for Ukraine and would offer the country geopolitical levers of influence in the Danube Delta and boost revenues from cargo transit that will, in turn, spur modernization and construction of new transport infrastructure in the area.
Referring to a study conducted by the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Ecological Problems, Delta-Lotsman said the canal would not negatively impact the environment in the region.
The company referred to the environmentally-charged protests targeting the canal project as an orchestrated attack designed to defend Romanian economic interests.
According to the company, the controversy surrounding the project exemplifies the clash of interests between both countries and reopening of the canal would challenge Romania’s monopolistic position on shipping transit through the delta.
“If the Bystre project is successful, it may take up to 60 percent of Romania’s transit that now goes through its canals,” Delta-Lotsman said in a statement.
The volume of cargo transportation through the Danube Delta between Europe and Asia is estimated at $100 million annually, it said.
Oleksiy Soldatov, an economic director at Ukrainian shipping company Ukrrichflot, said the new canal has advantages over Romanian routes. It is capable of handling ship transport 24 hours a day in both directions, while the main competing Romanian canal can only handle transport in one direction at a time.
Moreover, Ukraine’s canal is shorter – nine kilometers long compared with the 75-kilometer length of the Romanian canal. As a result, transit through Ukraine’s canal will cost several-fold less.
Defiant environmentalists
Olga Melen, a lawyer with a Lviv-based non-governmental organization called Environment People Law, said Ukraine has broken a number of voluntarily adopted international conventions when it decided to reopen the canal without consulting neighbors on its cross-border impact.
When Ukraine’s institutions issued an ecological expertise on the impact that the reopening of the canal would have on the biosphere reserve, they failed to take all these conventions into account.
“Besides the Bystre Canal, the government had eight other options on where to open a canal in Ukraine’s delta [region],” she said.
The Bystre route was chosen, as it was the cheapest and fastest to complete, but this option posed the worst ecological impact, she added.
“For instance, it would cost nearly $60 million to build a lock canal outside the reserve compared to the $100 million that was to be spent on the Bystre project,” said Melen.
In 2006, the UN Economic Commission for Europe concluded that expanding the canal would likely have several “significant adverse” effects on wildlife habitats.
The commission concluded that dredging of the canal, increased traffic, and riverbank reinforcement measures would significantly hurt the habitat. The commission also predicted an increase in noise pollution and waste dumping in connection with the canal’s reopening.
Thus far, Bucharest’s protests have fallen on deaf ears in Ukraine.
But on May 7, Romanian Foreign Minister Adrian Cioroianu pledged that his country would turn the issue into an international affair, challenging Ukraine’s alleged violations in Romania to European courts.
“They tell us that the canal has an economic importance. [But] we cannot make them understand that the finalization of the project will irreversibly affect a unique geographic area,” Cioroianu said.
